A former ORNGE executive claims she was bullied and sexually harassed by founder Dr. Chris Mazza and was concerned the air ambulance firm was a “potential criminal enterprise.”

In a wrongful dismissal lawsuit, ORNGE’s former government relations director Lisa Kirbie takes direct aim at Mazza, calling him everything from misogynist to racist to sexist.

And Kirbie describes the controversial multi-million dollar payment by an Italian helicopter firm to Mazza’s for-profit company as a “kickback.” She said two ORNGE executives told her the “AgustaWestland fraud” is the “tip of the iceberg” and that people would “go to jail” if it was discovered.

She also said she was told by the executives, whom she did not name, that former ORNGE lawyer Alf Apps was the “mastermind” of the scheme.

None of Kirbie’s allegations have been tested in court. She is only suing ORNGE, but makes allegations against others. Mazza’s lawyer has denied all allegations.

Lawyer Apps, no longer associated with ORNGE, also hotly denied allegations made against him, saying he was just a lawyer, not a mastermind. “I deny the truth of the allegations flatly,” Apps said.

ORNGE is Ontario’s $150-million-a-year air ambulance system, founded by Mazza in 2005 in what the former emergency-room doctor says was an attempt to streamline a fractured system and save lives.

A Star investigation found that ORNGE went off the rails, becoming an organization with bloated salaries, nepotism, executive perks and a series of pie-in-the-sky business plans that cost a lot and provided no return to taxpayers. Along the way, safety was compromised — helicopter ambulances were too often grounded. When they did fly, the expensive, state-of-the-art “hospital in the sky” was so jammed with equipment a medic could not perform CPR.

According to her statement of claim, filed in court last week, Kirbie said she was hired by ORNGE in 2010 and immediately smelled problems.

One day, she claims, Mazza took her aside and said she had to learn how to “tame” him, just as she had done her partner, Liberal strategist Warren Kinsella. Kirbie said Mazza had told her how “women like older men.”

“(If you) can tame that lion, you can tame this one,” Mazza said, according to Kirbie.

Dumped by ORNGE last July, Kirbie is asking for about $300,000, made up of one year’s salary, damages and benefits covering a 20-month period. An ORNGE spokesperson said Tuesday that Kirbie was offered a “reasonable termination package” but she refused it.

“ORNGE does not dispute that Ms. Kirbie is owed compensation for termination,” said spokesman Stephen Patterson, ORNGE’s new general counsel. He said ORNGE is disputing the amount and will issue a statement of defence in the next few weeks. As to the allegations made, Patterson said he could not comment as they predate the current leadership of ORNGE.

Kirbie had an annual salary of $143,924 in her final year. She said earlier in her time at ORNGE she learned a male subordinate was paid more than her and she complained. ORNGE agreed to increase her salary so that it would be slightly more than the subordinate.

In her pleadings, Kirbie said ORNGE hired her to handle contacts with the provincial government, promoting the agency and also providing advice on legislation that affected the air ambulance service. Kirbie said she reported directly to Mazza and, from the outset, it was a difficult experience.

“Immediately it was apparent that Mazza was incredibly demanding, volatile, had unreasonable expectations and was a racist and misogynist,” Kirbie said in her claim. On the racism allegation, Kirbie said Mazza went on a “racist tirade about aboriginal Canadians,” people ORNGE air ambulances often transport from the north to the south for medical procedures.

Kirbie claims that Mazza constantly looked at her in a “sexual way,” stared at her breasts and legs, and treated her like an “object rather than a qualified professional.” According to Kirbie, Mazza made comments about other ORNGE women, including one unnamed employee who Mazza said, with Kirbie present, was “a beautiful girl with a beautiful body.”

On another occasion, she said Mazza told her: “Let’s face it, you’re an attractive woman.”

Kirbie claims she was continually providing information to the province’s auditor general that “ORNGE was refusing to divulge” and encouraged other executives to do the same. She said she twigged to Mazza’s $1.4-million salary by the early summer of 2011 and was told by others to keep the information quiet. Eventually, Kirbie said, she began recording conversations at ORNGE and in 2012 provided information to Ontario Provincial Police detectives who had been called in to investigate.

Kirbie’s suit describes her mounting frustration that lawyer Alf Apps, then with Fasken Martineau, was doing the government relations work that she was hired to do.

Apps, in several responses to the Star, has said he never did government relations work, but did help ORNGE brief top government officials on a series of plans for for-profit companies and money-making strategies. The provincial integrity commissioner has ruled that Apps should have registered as a lobbyist regarding his contacts with government. That’s a ruling Apps disagrees with.

In one section of Kirbie’s claim, she says executives told her Apps was the “mastermind” of a scheme that saw ORNGE overpay Italian helicopter manufacturer AgustaWestland, so that money (about $4.7 million, with another $2 million promised) could flow back to a Mazza company. The OPP is investigating the deal.

“Lisa had no evidence at all to substantiate anything these two executives told her. However, she was obviously very concerned that she had come to work for a company that was a potential criminal enterprise,” her lawyer, Brian Shiller, writes in the claim. Shiller told the Star Kirbie was not available for an interview on the case.

In his response to the Star, Apps said he was “nowhere near any AgustaWestland meetings, negotiations or documentation.” An AgustaWestland executive, in testimony at Queen’s Park earlier this year, said the firm did nothing wrong.

Mazza, through his lawyer, said he believes there is acrimony between Kirbie and Apps tracing back to work both did for the federal Liberals in Ottawa. Kirbie worked for former Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff and Apps was until early this year the president of the federal Liberal Party.

“It is now also becoming more and more evident that this ‘scandal’ has been manufactured and orchestrated by Ms. Kirbie for personal reasons. There is no scandal, just a vendetta that Ms. Kirbie holds against Mr. Apps and Dr. Mazza,” lawyer Yachetti writes.

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